Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We spent Christmas Eve with the Larsen's (as we do most years). We met at Mom & Dad's between 5 and 6 PM. We ate together, read from the Bible while the kids acted out the story of Christ's birth, sang Christmas carols around the tree, and exchanged gifts. Everyone had a great time, especially Mom & Dad who received new cell phones from Maren & Eric.
Christmas morning, the kids got up around 8 AM. Dell took pictures as the kids rushed for their gifts (and I directed them to the correct piles). Dell loved his digital photo frame. He put pictures on it right away and we all enjoyed looking at pictures of all of us. Brooklyn loved videotaping all of us with her new video camera. She and Savannah also spent the day Instant Messaging each other on their IM-ME's. Savannah also took a lot of pictures of us and her presents on her digital camera. Then she had fun downloading them to her computers. Jordan loved his transformers, especially his Ultimate BumbleBee. He also played his Transformers game on his Nintendo DS Lite. Troy loved his Nintendo DS Lite (a much anticipated item) and played his CARS game and his Little Einsteins game. He also loved his "UnderDog" movie. He kept calling it the UNDERWEAR DOG movie. We tried to correct him, but he insisted it was UNDERWEAR DOG! LOL!

Later, we headed to Dell's Dad's house. We ate with his dad, Bill, and his step mom, Alice Ann, and her children and grandchildren and Dell's brother, Eric, and his wife, Teresa, and their two boys. We exchanged gifts with Dell's family near the end. Alice Ann (as always) gave the most creative and wonderful homemade gifts. She made all of the kids flannel tied blankets and gave all of the married couples pj's with pictures of their spouses on the t-shirt. We all opened them together and laughed and showed each other. Then we put on the shirts and Bill snapped photos of each couple. She also made each family a calender (our third year she's made them) with personalized photos and birthdays and anniversaries. Wow! She always puts SO MUCH WORK into our gifts. Thanks Alice Ann!! :) Of course, all of our gifts were wonderful!

Now we're looking forward to celebrating New Year's Eve with family and anticipating new changes in 2008!

Brooklyn's 14th Birthday

Brooklyn celebrated her 14th birthday by going to the "Alvin and the Chipmunks" movie with her immediate family (& Trevor) and her friends (Melissa, Chantel, & Jessica). Then she had some family come over to our house for pizza, soda, cake and icecream. Aunt Teresa & Uncle Eric came with Alex & Trevor. Uncle Tom & Aunt Tami brought Lily & Jefferson. Uncle Kurtis also made an appearance with his new car (a Toyota Rav 4). He took Brooklyn, Savannah, and Teresa for a drive through the neighborhood. Whee! She especially loved to wear the shirt that mom bought her. It said, "I'm here for the presents". Brooklyn was seen smiling a lot at the party. This was partly due to the fact that she got her braces off the day before. Yeah! She was also seen listening to music often on her new MP3 player. It was a gift from Ashton (a boy she's friends with at school). Overall she seemed to have a wonderful time. Luckily everyone was able to travel safely since we had quite a snowstorm overnight.

Jordan the Climber!

Jordan loves to climb, especially in Mom & Dad's bathroom. What a monkey!

Brooklyn Takes Woodshop!

Brooklyn decided to take woodshop this year (in 8th grade). Here is a pool table she made herself. Can you tell she's getting an A in woodshop? Way to go, Brooklyn! :)

Florida 2007

Dell and I traveled to Florida in November 2007. We traveled all over Florida and spent a day with our niece, Tessa. She moved from Michigan to Florida this past summer. We were so happy that she drove from one side of Florida to the other just to see us (from Rockledge to Sarasota--172 miles one way--and then back again later the same day). Our niece, Brittany, also began working at Disneyworld this past summer (we were unsuccessful at seeing her while we were there, sniff sniff). Here are some pictures taken with Tessa's camera in Florida over the past 6 months (approximately).